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Meanwhile the conflicting current of musical materialism is running strong. The Daily Mail, always in the van of artistic progress, has espoused the cause of the insurgent Georgians with intrepid zeal.  Mr. JULIUS HARRISON is extolled in a leading article for finding a theme for an orchestral work, not in any of the misty or metaphysical abstractions which appealed to the effete Victorian composers, but in plums.  And, mind you, not Carlsbad, but honest Worcestershire plums, without any Teutonic taint.  Mr. JULIUS HARRISON’S patriotic example is not likely to be lost on his brother composers.  Indeed it is asserted on credible authority that Mr. GRANVILLE BANTOCK, who has completely forsworn all Oriental and exotic subjects, is engaged on a gigantic symphony, with choral interludes, entitled “Yorkshire Pudding;” and that Mr. JOSEF HOLBROOKE is collaborating with Lord HOWARD DE WALDEN in a romantic historical opera in fifteen Acts called “From Woad to Broadcloth.”

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Mr. BERNARD SHAW, who, it may be necessary to remind youthful readers, was a musical critic on The Star and The World before he achieved fame as a dramatist, has been causing his friends and admirers serious misgivings by his article on Sir EDWARD ELGAR in a new musical journal, Music and Letters.  Sir EDWARD ELGAR has a great following; he has written oratorios; he is an O.M.; yet Mr. SHAW salutes him as the greatest English composer, the true lineal descendant of BEETHOVEN, one of the Immortals and the only candidate for Westminster Abbey!  To find Mr. SHAW taking a majority view is bad enough; it is a case of proving false to the tradition of a lifetime—­a moral suicide.  But why drag in BEETHOVEN?  So left-handed a compliment prompts the suspicion that, after all, what appears to be eulogy is in reality nothing more than an essay in adroitly dissembled obloquy. Mutatis mutandis, Mr. SHAW would not thank Sir EDWARD ELGAR for calling him, for example, the Voltaire de nos jours.  What he does enjoy is the frank disparagement of Mr. WILFRID BLUNT, who describes him in the second volume of My Diary, just published, as “an ugly fellow, his face a pasty-white, with a red nose and a rusty red beard, and little slaty-blue eyes.”

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An interesting but, we regret to say, decidedly hostile estimate of Mr. LLOYD GEORGE as a musician appears in the columns of a leading anti-Coalition daily.  The critic discusses the PREMIER both as vocalist and instrumentalist, and in both capacities finds him sadly wanting.  The volume of his voice is small, the timbre is unpleasant, the production faulty and the intonation far from pure.  Admitting that Mr. LLOYD GEORGE has a certain flexibility and facility common to all Welsh singers, the critic condemns his habit of resorting to an emotional tremolo which frequently degenerates into a mere “wobble.”  The PREMIER, he continues, shows agility and spirit in florid passages, but his declamation lacks dignity and his articulation is often indistinct.  As a pianist he is equally unsatisfactory; his repertory is extremely limited and he is quite unable to interpret the complex harmonies of the Russian School.